1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system displays and networks, and more particularly to a system and method for communication of uncompressed visual information through a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems typically interact with end users through a visual display. The increasingly powerful components used in information handling systems have allowed presentation of visual images with high resolutions that use large numbers of pixels disposed in a display. High resolution images typically require large amounts of information with pixel values frequently refreshed at a display. Generally, in order to generate high resolution images, information handling systems compress the visual information until the visual information is rendered as pixel values for communication to a display. For example, pictures or videos are stored in compressed form, such as JPEG and MPEG formats, and, often, much of the processing for creating the visual images is performed by specialized components located in a graphics card. By keeping visual information compressed until it is rendered by the graphics card into pixel values, less bandwidth is used within the information handling system for communicating the visual information between processing components, such as from memory to the CPU or the graphics card. The rendered visual information typically proceeds from the graphics card to the display using display-specific connections, such as VGA or DVI connections. These display-specific connections are designed to keep a steady flow of uncompressed pixel-level visual information from the graphics card to the display controller, which directs the display pixels to present colors determined from the uncompressed visual information.
Recently, to increase the flexibility available when communicating uncompressed visual information to a display, industry has introduced the DisplayPort specification to define a digital I/O interface for internal and external display platforms. The DisplayPort specification provides an asynchronous bi-directional mechanism to deliver uncompressed digital packetized video streams over a two pair wire interface with pixel data encapsulated into 64 byte micropacket transport units. The transport units contain data, control and synchronization for an end device, known as a sink, which receives video from a single transmitting source device. DisplayPort sink devices store EDID information that is communicated from the sink device to the source device. Although the DisplayPort digital packetized architecture implies an ability to steer packets to different locations, version 1.1 of the DisplayPort specification only provides for a direct link between a single source and sink pair of devices, such as through a direct cable connection.